


Once More, We Return

by n_a_feathers



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, No Major Character Death, The Wicked + The Divine AU, coldflashweeks2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-04-24 04:32:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14348016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_a_feathers/pseuds/n_a_feathers
Summary: Every ninety years twelve gods incarnate as humans. They’re loved, they’re hated. They inspire. And within two years they’re dead.For Day 3 of ColdFlash Week: Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Creature AU





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

The first time Barry hears about the Recurrence he's 13 and a little too weird to fit in anywhere. He eats his lunches quickly and spends the rest of his recess in the school library, reading book after book and the librarian knows him by name.

 

His grandparents take him to church whenever he travels halfway across the country to visit them but religion isn’t really a part of his life. Other kids not only go to church, but also have _faith_. It’s hard for him to comprehend. Barry believes in maths, in science, in gravity and the other constants of the universe. Trusting in an invisible power whose existence can’t be proven conclusively is a tall ask. It’s beyond him.

 

Sometimes he wishes it wasn’t. When his mother grew sick, he wished he’d had his classmate’s conviction. He went to the in-between places, the quiet places, the lonely places, and tried praying but the words felt empty on his tongue. Nothing he said stopped her wasting away. When she died, she wasn’t in heaven – she was just gone.

 

So when he hears about real gods, he has to know more. Someone says something inconsequential to him, a throwaway remark that - in hindsight - he can't actually remember, but it gets him asking questions until eventually he's directed to the heavy encyclopaedias under the newspaper and periodical stand. He picks up Otter – Rethimnon and takes it to the back stacks where no one goes. He can’t explain why he hides but he does. He huddles amongst the books full of decades-out-of-date science and flicks through the encyclopaedia’s Bible-thin pages until he finds what he’s looking for: Recurrence.

 

The entry is short and mostly filled with conjecture. There’s a photo of the last Recurrence back in the 1920s though and it stokes the fire of his curiosity. He traces his fingers over faces that look human. They’re not though. Or at least that’s the story.

 

Every ninety years twelve gods incarnate as humans. They’re loved, they’re hated. They inspire. And within two years they’re dead.

 

If it's all true then the next Recurrence will be in less than a decade. He'll get to live through it, thinks Barry excitedly.

 

He follows lead after lead and it's like tugging at a loose thread - it just keeps coming. There's always something new to learn, always some fresh mystery, but never anything concrete. He prays that the next 7 years will go quickly - if not to save him from the loneliness of school, then to bring him closer to some answers.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s 2013 and Barry is in his twentieth year. He keeps a daily eye on the news and sweeps internet forums for any sign of the beginning of the Recurrence. He’s certain it will happen; this is his own little religion now. He has the feverous conviction of the believer.

 

Baal is the first to ascend. He’s in Metropolis and as soon as Barry catches wind of it, he fakes sick from university so that he can go to his first performance. Barry’s years of research could never have prepared him for the overwhelming reality of being audience to a god – and there is no doubt in his mind now that the man on the stage _is_ a god. He looks for all intents and purposes to be Barry’s age and human-shaped but put them next to each other and there would be no denying that Baal is something different entirely. For hours Barry is kept on the very brink of ecstasy. He doesn’t understand a word the lightning god is saying and yet each one is spoken straight into the pre-verbal folds of his brain; the noises transcending meaning. Barry has never felt so alive, never felt more connected and in sync with the crowd around him and the man at the front who seems to be speaking to each of them individually. The crowd moves with febrile energy.

 

When it’s all said and done, Barry staggers back to his hostel, feeling like he’s made of clouds, and drifts down to bed and sleeps.

 

It had been worth the wait.

 

 

***

 

 

After that, the new gods come thick and fast. Once the story has gained momentum, it becomes easier for Barry to keep track of it all. No longer does he have to trawl obscure mythology forums, now he just turns on the evening news.

 

He goes to see every new god perform live. Those he particularly likes, he’ll try to see again. Lucifer ascends in Los Angeles, of course. He tinkles pretty tunes on a grand piano in the middle of a filthy club and his smile kindles lust that he never leaves unfulfilled. Sekhmet is in Gotham, The Morrigan is in New Orleans, Woden is in Ivy Town. Each performance leaves him feeling simultaneously satisfied and unfulfilled. Barry soon runs out of lies to tell his teachers and money alike.

 

He’s happier than ever though. He’s waited half his life for this. He’s never really had friends but he had his belief in this. What he wouldn’t give to have a week, a day, even an hour to ask all the questions he’s thought up over the years.

 

But he’s just one in a crowd of thousands. During the performances he’s hooked in, feeling like he’s on top of the world and like the god is communing directly with just him. When it’s all over, he realises the truth: he’s no more special than any of the other people crowded against him in the audience. For a while he despairs, believing they’ll all be gone before any sense can be made of this phenomenon. In his heart of hearts Barry wants to be the one to figure it all out.

 

He finally gets his chance when Central City births its own immaculate deity.

 

It’s just after the New Year when Barry first hears the news. It’s still another week before he has to go back to classes so he’s free to queue the morning of the performance, first in line and shivering his ass off for 10 hours in the wintry cold. Kind of appropriate though, he thinks, considering who he’s come to see.

 

Boreas – god of the north wind and bringer of winter.

 

Barry watches him up on stage, everything he ever hoped for and dreamt of made real in the shape of a man. He’s marked with a shock of blue over his eyes, looking almost like a painted-on mask. Winter peppers his close-cropped hair and hints that he’s much older than the other gods, but to Barry it only adds to his peculiar humanity.

 

Barry’s as close to the stage as he can get without climbing up onto it and he’s hard in his jeans. In the moment he doesn’t feel ashamed though because everyone else is the same. Boreas’ performance is something else entirely. It’s first love, it’s the moments before the storm, it’s the perfection of locks and keys, it’s crisp autumn mornings and winter nights under a downy blanket. The other gods pale in comparison.

 

Boreas kneels at the edge of the stage and reaches out to the crowd. He speaks and his voice creeps inside Barry like a winter chill and if only Barry could stretch his hand out a little further, they might brush fingertips. Eyes made intense by the promises they offer lock with Barry’s own for a second and then continue on their way. Barry feels _seen_ like he never has before.

 

His heart is beating in his ears, louder even than the bass thumping through the speakers on either side of the stage and surely everyone around him must hear it.

 

It quickens the closer Boreas’ hand comes to his own, teasing above the sea of outreached hands like a youth leaning over the boat’s side to feel the water rush over his fingers. The longer the concert stretches out, the more vitalised he seems. What kind of energy does he pull from them all?

 

Boreas’ eyes sweep the room and then focus as the song reaches its peak. It feels so much like the god is looking straight at Barry, like he’s singing just to him.

 

Boreas leans forward and reaches out, purposeful.

 

Barry rises to meet him halfway.

 

They touch.

 

And Barry pulls back, shocked.

 

The god was cold, cold like the dead.

 

And Barry remembers the room: the garish curtains, the plush carpet, the incessant organ music. Most of all the coffin, grown huge in his memory, seeming to dominate the whole of the front of the chapel. The stillness was enough to make him believe in the concept of a soul. He reached forward to hold her hand, fingers trembling in a way he was embarrassed by at the time. He wanted to be brave for her.

 

They touched.

 

And Barry pulled back, shocked.

 

She was so cold.

 

Boreas remains squatting on the edge of the stage. Those eyes, amused now, continue to follow Barry as the song comes to its close. A part of Barry knows it will be the last of the night. He doesn’t want it to be. He wants this to go on forever.

 

But Boreas is sated, glutted on their admiration and worship. The ritual – such as it is – is accomplished.

 

Boreas extends to his full height, a roguish smile across his face, as the crowd surges around Barry. He holds his hand out in front of him, pointer extended, the rest of his fingers held loosely. The crowd stills, silence falling, waiting for the god to speak. They all know what’s coming but they wait with bated breath anyway.

 

“1.”

 

He pauses. He has them in the palm of his hand.

 

“2.”

 

It’s perfect agony waiting. His grin couldn’t be wider.

 

“3.”

 

Barry feels like the world has stilled around them, like they’re stuck for eternity in the moment between seconds. He looks up at Boreas and Boreas looks back at him and Barry wants to stay here forever.

 

“4.”

 

When Barry’s god clicks his fingers, it begins to snow.

 

Pinpoints of cold, the same cold of Boreas’ hand, fall on Barry’s brow. It feels like it burrows down into his brain, the chill a direct line between himself and the godhead. He takes one step backward; it feels like he steps into nothingness.

 

He tries to blink the darkness away; it engulfs him.

 

He’s gone.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

When he wakes up next he’s backstage on a thin mattress and he’s not the only one. Barry has heard of this happening, seen it on the rare occasion with his own eyes, but it’s the first time he’s experienced it. He feels like he’s had the greatest, most restful sleep he’s ever had.

 

“Hey, kid,” comes that voice that had crept inside and overwhelmed him. “Feeling okay?”

 

Boreas up close is even more breathtaking than he had been up on the stage. He squats besides Barry’s makeshift bed and holds him immobile with his eyes – grey like a midwinter sky.

 

“Boreas,” says Barry, his voice full of wonder.

 

The god’s face scrunches up in an all too human show of distaste. “Call me Len. This whole god thing’s a heap of rubbish.”

 

Len’s wearing a thick winter jacket over the outfit he had on for his performance, and he digs a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, puts one between his teeth and offers the rest to Barry.

 

Barry shakes his head as he picks himself up off the floor. Len follows him up and it’s impossible how much more graceful he makes the action look. Barry wobbles a little, lightheaded, and Len is instantly at his side, a solid weight to still the world. His body – what Barry can feel of it through the layers separating them – is still cold.

 

But they’re so close now and Barry will probably never get a chance like this again. He musters his courage, turns into Len and says, “Can I ask you some questions?”

 

Len rights Barry with steady hands and moves away. “Are you a cop? A reporter?” he asks, turning back, voice low and quick and accusing.

 

“No,” Barry is quick to assure to both. “I’m just a student.”

 

Len’s shoulders un-tense and almost immediately he draws closer, drawn back to Barry’s presence like a heavenly body. “Then sure, if you can find me a light.”

 

Barry doesn’t have a lighter on him so they silently head out towards the front of the venue where the smokers are likely to congregate. Len flips his hood up over his face before they get outside but the mask pattern over his eyes gives him away to anyone who looks closely. Barry can’t quite decide if he moves like a normal human or if there’s something particularly supernatural to the long stride of his legs and the way he parts a crowd.

 

They eventually find someone who can help them out with a lighter and then Len starts walking down streets at random and Barry follows obediently behind, wondering what’s happening. He’s too nervous to ask questions at this point, as though showing a lack of faith would bring calamity down upon him like Lot’s wife or Orpheus.

 

He’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth but something about this feels off though. Like, shouldn’t being in the presence of a god be a little less casual? Are they allowed to just wander about? Doesn’t Len have more important things to be doing? And the number one question: why Barry? There were a dozen kids in that room just like him when he woke up. What made Barry so special?

 

Len’s hood has fallen back a bit as they walk and Barry watches rapt as he lifts the cigarette to his plush lips again and again. He has a serious brow which is betrayed by the smile always fighting to take over his face. Barry wants to hear him laugh.

 

Len catches him staring. “It’s a dirty habit, I know. You were right to not take one. I’d given up myself until this whole godhead thing.” Len holds the cigarette up in front of his face and admires the glowing tip. Barry is mesmerised by his fingers, long and clever and somehow both utilitarian and artistic in their movements. “I’m going to be dead in two years anyway, I just finally thought, fuck it. It’s not the cigarettes that’ll kill me.”

 

“Before, why couldn’t you just—” Barry mimed snapping his fingers together. He’d seen Lucifer light a cigarette that way in LA.

 

Len ducks his head with a smile. “Unfortunately, that’s not in my repertoire. Not a fire god.” He holds the cigarette up in front of him for Barry to see and Barry watches in fascination as it’s slowly encased in ice. Len flicks it into the next rubbish bin they pass. “I can ice a beer like no one’s business though. Great party trick.”

 

He lights another and Barry has time to notice he’s using the same lighter Barry thought he’d seen him borrow and return earlier before it’s secreted away in his jacket again.

 

Barry doesn’t know what compels him to say it, but the next words out of his mouth, coming immediately and unbidden, are: “Do you want to get a drink?”

 

Len considers Barry with the cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes tracing their way leisurely down Barry’s body before making their way back up to his face. He doesn’t hide his intent. Barry’s never been with a man or a woman before, and it wasn’t what he’d meant, but suddenly he _wants_.

 

Len smiles but it’s not laughingly: it’s predatory. “I know somewhere we can go.”

 

Barry stomach flips and he suddenly feels way out of his depth. What was he doing asking a god for more of his time? What sacrifices would he have to make for it? He finds he doesn’t care. Anything for a little more time with Len.

 

But still…

 

“A bar? I don’t really…” Barry trails off. Len has to be in his mid-to-late twenties and seems so mature and cool. Why on earth did he suggest a drink? It sounded like an adult thing to say and now he doesn’t want to admit he’s too young to get into a bar.

 

Len considers him and understands right away. “Do you even have a fake ID?”

 

Barry’s a year and three months from 21. That hadn’t ever seemed like a particularly long time. Now he realises that Len might be dead before they could legally share a beer together.

 

“Well?” Len prompts after a dragged out silence.

 

“No,” Barry is forced to admit, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck.

 

“Are you at least legal?” And Barry imagines he hears disdain in the question.

 

“Yes!” He didn’t mean to say it so explosively. He reigns himself in and in a quieter voice repeats, “Yes, I’m 19.”

 

“19. Jesus.”

 

An expression flits across Len’s face, as quick as a passing shadow, and he looks so intensely at Barry that he almost can’t stand it. He doesn’t know what it means and it makes him nervous. Then Len spins around, his coat flaring out dramatically behind him, and starts walking away.

 

Barry stands there, feeling small, feeling insufficient. It’s in his throat, strangling him. Seven years of wanting and waiting, months of it all being more amazing than he could ever have imagined, and when he’s finally close enough to touch, a god looks at him and finds him wanting.

 

His eyes are prickling with tears and he feels full of wrongness when Len stops in his tracks.

 

He stands there still for a moment, shoulders squared and then he turns back, resolution on his face. “Come on.”

 

Barry stands there with his mouth agape, not quite believing his ears.

 

“What?”

 

“My apartment’s not far, and—” Len winks “—I don’t card.”

 

When Len starts walking off this time, Barry jogs to catch up.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Barry’s not sure what he expected of Len’s apartment, but it’s not this. Maybe he thought there’d be an altar or candles or marble columns but it turns out to be boringly normal. A two bedroom apartment in a high rise in the inner city. Not overly nice but not a shithole either.

 

“Is this really yours?” Barry asks, taking off his jacket and hanging it beside Len’s in the entranceway.

 

“No,” Len reappears from the kitchen with a bottle of wine and two glasses in his hands. “I had a rundown apartment over in the Keys but they gave me this after my ascension.”

 

They settle down on the couch and the apartment is high enough up that Barry can see the city spread out below them through the windows. The Greek gods of old lived atop Mount Olympus, looking down upon the mortal people. This apartment might not look like a place of worship, but maybe things hadn’t changed so much after all, Barry mused.

 

Len pours them both a glass of wine and Barry takes a sip even though he knows he’ll hate the taste of it. He tries not to let his face screw up afterwards but Len smirks anyway.

 

“Sorry, it’s all I had.”

 

“It’s fine,” Barry lies. Then something Len said earlier comes back to him. “ _They_ gave you this apartment? Who? The other gods?”

 

Len smiles secretively behind his glass. “No.”

 

“Fans?”

 

“No.”

 

“Who then?” Barry asks, exasperated by Len’s refusal to elaborate.

 

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

 

Len’s not smiling and Barry’s not so sure he’s joking. He doesn’t push.

 

Len looks away then, out over the city, and Barry wonders at all the things he doesn’t know about these gods. Even the things he does know for certain would barely pad out that encyclopaedia entry he’d read all those years ago. As if reading his mind, Len says, “Didn’t you have some other questions you wanted to ask?”

 

A little childishly, Barry replies, “Are you going to answer any of them?”

 

Len cocks his head to the side and regards Barry from under his eyelashes. “Maybe.”

 

Barry looks straight back at him, not flinching from his stare. It feels like a challenge and an invitation all at once and if Barry makes one wrong move it could be stop being either. He doesn’t want that. He wants Len to not be disappointed in him. He wants him to not regret choosing Barry. Most importantly, he wants to not embarrass himself.

 

The longer they look at each other, the more Barry’s body surges with anticipation. Something of the challenge slips out of Len’s eyes eventually, as though he’s got the measure of Barry and found him satisfactory, and Barry makes his decision. Any other god and Barry’s curiosity might outweigh everything else but there’s something about Len that sets him apart from the rest of them. Barry wants to know him in an entirely different way.

 

Barry _wants_.

 

“Questions can wait.”

 

It takes Barry very little time to realise Len wasn’t putting on an act before: his body is just chronically cold to the touch. It’s a weird feeling against Barry’s lips, like kissing marble. He has the ridiculous thought that he’s about to recreate that movie scene where the character gets stuck licking a frozen pole, and when Len does indeed go to slip his tongue into Barry’s mouth, the laughter bursts out of him like a busted pipe.

 

Len pulls back, looking slightly offended. “What?”

 

“No, nothing,” Barry says between attempts to kiss him again, hampered by his giggling, “don’t worry.”

 

He figures he’s made a fool of himself already so why not indulge his curiosity while they’re so close but not too hot and heavy yet. Barry leans back out of the kiss (and Len chases after him, eyes hooded with desire, which is a huge confidence boost) and once Len has stilled, runs his fingers over the mark covering the god’s eyes. Up close it looks like it’s painted on but it doesn’t rub off and he can’t feel any difference between where Len’s skin ends and the marking begins. Being the diligent scientist-in-training he is, Barry licks it next.

 

It’s only after, when Len is giving him an inscrutable look, that he realises he could have been a bit less _3-year-old licking the wall to see if it’s flavoured like on Willy Wonka_ , and a bit more _mature_ _adult engaged in sexy-times_. These are probably things he would know if he had any romantic experience at all. But then Len is smiling in amusement so maybe Barry didn’t mess up too badly.

 

“It doesn’t come off,” he offers and Barry would swear he sounds fond. “I’ve tried.”

 

After that little speedbump things heat up quickly. Barry doesn’t have time to get nervous about being inexperienced as Len gentles him through everything. There’s always a soothing hand against his cheek, his chest, his thigh. When it all feels too much, suddenly there’s a reprieve, a let up until he feels ready for more. He ends up straddling Len and after a while he stops feeling the cold, even after he’s down to nothing except his underwear. Len is kneading his ass as he kisses down Barry’s chest, and Barry’s not entirely sure where he wants to touch most so he touches everywhere.

 

When he palms Len through his pants (Len is still fully dressed. Why is he still fully dressed?), the god shudders at the touch, head tilting back against the back of the couch and eyes blissfully half closed.

 

It’s intoxicating having that much effect on someone so powerful. Len is literally a god. Barry shifts in his lap, getting closer, chest to chest, but, more importantly, bringing himself into a position to be able to grind down against Len. He wishes he could be closer. He wants communion with his god.

 

And yet, it’s Len who looks up at him reverently, like he can’t quite believe how lucky he is. “Fuck, what’s your name?”

 

Barry laughs, a little breathlessly. How is he down to his underwear with a man who doesn’t even know his name? This isn’t Barry’s life. He’s never this daring. He’s never this lucky.

 

“Barry.”

 

“Barry,” Len repeats, and it sounds like a benediction coming from his lips.

 

Len’s hand goes to Barry’s chest, over his beating heart, and despite the cold of his body, his eyes are on fire with lust. Then he pushes. Pushes Barry back.

 

Barry wants to duck back in, lips on lips, and get back to the filthy grinding but Len keeps pushing him back.

 

And back.

 

And back.

 

Barry starts to panic. He’s a second from falling backwards and was there a coffee table behind them? He thinks so. He’s either going to end up on the floor, ego damaged, or he’s going to crack his head open and really make an impression. He’s not this flexible.

 

Or maybe cracking his head open is what Len’s going for. Is this when he finds out the pantheon need virgin sacrifices to survive?

 

Len pushes and Barry loses his balance and—

 

“Len!”

 

Barry tumbles backwards and instead of hitting his head on the coffee table, sinks into a plush blanket. Len lands on top of him in a swirl of snowflakes and Barry looks around bewildered. They’re in a different room. A bedroom by the looks of it. At the very least it’s a room with a bed because that’s what Barry’s laying on now.

 

Len smiles down at him and Barry feels his cheeks twitching to mirror it despite the adrenaline still flooding his system and making his heart beat like a clock on speed.

 

“It’s okay. Just a little miracle,” says Len, running a hand tenderly along Barry’s cheek and then leaning forward to kiss him gently.

 

_A little miracle_. Barry would laugh if his mouth wasn’t currently otherwise occupied. So much power beneath his fingers and Len uses it to transport them to somewhere more comfortable to make out on. It’s irreverent and ridiculous and exactly in line with everything Barry knows about Len so far – as little as he does.

 

Len runs his hands up and down Barry’s sides, mouthing over his neck, his collarbone, and when his thumb skates over Barry’s nipple it’s like an electric shock right down to his toes. He shudders in an entirely involuntary way, and Len pulls back to watch. His mouth hangs open slackly, stuck on an eternal exclamation of wonder.

 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” he says. “I wanna fuck you so badly.”

 

Barry _wants_.

 

Molten heat pools in his gut and why does he even have these stupid briefs on anymore? He just wants to feel Len against him, touching him, _inside him_. It’s instinctual and raw. He grabs at Len’s shirt, pulling at it, feeling clumsy like a newborn foal, but Len gets the message and leans back, the muscles of his stomach stretching as he pulls it up and off and Barry reaches out and runs his hands over the planes of Len’s chest. The chill of his skin is intoxicating and no match for the heat of Barry’s.

 

Hands fumbling together, Len and Barry work to get Len’s pants undone and Barry takes care of his own underwear as Len rolls off to undress and then they’re both as naked as the day they were born.

 

It’s so much better this way, skin to skin. Len pants wetly into his shoulder as they rub together and Barry’s embarrassing close already. He tells Len as much and he groans, withdrawing a bit – too much – and hanging his head, breathing deeply. One of his hands reaches down and takes a tight grip at the base of his erection and Barry understands wanting to draw this out forever, but a part of him still itches to take Len in hand and stroke him to a quick and messy climax.

 

Barry rubs his hands along Len’s arms, wanting to still feel that connection, and Len eventually props himself up on both elbows and dips down to smear kisses against Barry’s lips.

 

Barry thinks he knows what Len wants but isn’t asking. He wants it too. He’s never been more ready.

 

“Do you have… you know?”

 

Len tilts his head with a smile. “You know?”

 

“You know,” Barry repeats, feeling his face heat up.

 

“Are you twelve?” Len teases. “Maybe I should have carded you at the door.”

 

Barry whacks him on the arm. “You’re a dick.”

 

“You want my dick.”

 

The words make Barry’s stomach drop like he’s falling. He suddenly hyper-aware of where their bodies are pressed together, heat meeting cold – and where they’re not but should be.

 

He licks his lips. There’s no sense denying the truth.

 

“I do.”

 

Len stares into his eyes a moment, considering the sincerity of his words but Barry knows he won’t find any hesitation there. Barry wants this like he’s never wanted anything else before. Len must come to the same conclusion because then he’s leaning over to rummage in the bedside table.

 

Everything happens quickly after that, the excitement and his nerves skewing Barry’s perception of time. It all seems to happen at once even though he knows each action comes in a sequence. Leonard calms him with kisses and when he slips lube-slick fingers inside Barry, it’s new and strange and a bit scary but good. Len holds his eyes the entire time and smiles contentedly when Barry moans as pleasure tingles inside him, spreading out and almost paralysing his entire lower half with its intensity. He feels like he’s on the brink of orgasm for minutes at a time and when Len withdraws his fingers, Barry groans in frustration. If he didn’t know something even better was coming, he’d almost be tempted to try and get Len’s fingers in him again to finish off what they’d started.

 

Len hands him the condom and Barry feels like he’s very obviously never done this before when he tears the package open with clumsy fingers and rolls it down Len’s erection. He likes the feel of Len in his hand though, the promising hardness, and takes up stroking him as Len drizzles lube over himself.

 

“How do you want to do this?” Len asks, a slight hitch in his breath as Barry continues working his dick.

 

Barry considers it a moment, thinks of all the positions he’s seen in porn, all the ways he could try to make himself seem more experienced than he is, but in the end all he really wants is to feel close to Len.

 

“I want to see you.” _In every way there is to see and know you_ , he could add but that would be foolish.

 

Len guides him into lying down on his back and then finds his own place between his legs. There’s a thin sheen on sweat across Len’s chest that doesn’t make any sense the more Barry thinks about it because Len’s body is still cool to the touch when Barry reaches up and cups him behind the neck to pull him into a kiss.

 

“Let me just…”

 

Len takes hold of Barry’s left ankle and hoists it over his shoulder. Barry can feel the stretch all along his leg but it’s comfortable enough. He feels open though. He trusts Len more than he really should for how long they’ve known each other but under anyone else’s gaze he might have felt over-exposed. He just feels safe though.

 

Len slips his fingers inside him again, just testing, a promise of things to come, and then lines his dick up. When he pushes in, it’s a whole new sensation, completely different to the fingers. Barry feels filled and connected in a way he never has before. Len’s eyes are hooded, dumb with desire, focussed on where they’re joined as he slides slowly inside Barry.

 

It’s forever and no time at all before they’re united as fully as they ever will be.

 

“Are you okay?” Len asks as he rains down kisses on Barry like manna from heaven. His cool lips do nothing to quench the fire inside Barry. “You feel so good.”

 

Barry strokes along Len’s side, feeling the tenseness of his muscles as he holds himself still. Barry’s right leg is cramping a little and he shifts slightly, just moving it to a more comfortable position, but the jostling causes Len’s eyes to snap shut as he bites his lip on a moan. Barry’s dick twitches and he reaches between them to give it a stroke and the feeling of that coupled with the feeling of Len inside him is the most intense experience of his life.

 

“I’m fine. Go for it.”

 

Len starts off with a slow rocking and Barry keeps stroking himself through it. He still feels strangely full, a little uncomfortable, but not in any kind of pain. Len’s strokes are unsatisfying in the best way. They’re building a pressure, a tenseness inside him, like the slow, breathtaking ride up the rollercoaster before it drops. Every now and again it sparks like a match struck against flint but not quite igniting. It’s the most exquisite torture.

 

Len never takes his eyes off Barry’s and he’s damnably collected as Barry falls apart beneath him. Barry’s embarrassed by all the noises he’s making but he literally can’t stop; Len is hitting every button and Barry feels like a raw nerve, a livewire, every god damn cliché there is.

 

As Len’s movements grow more erratic he lets Barry’s leg drop from his shoulder, smothering him with his whole body, his arms wrapping around Barry’s shoulders to pull him ever closer. They’re touching everywhere. As Len thrusts short and sharp into Barry it feels like tingles of electricity radiate from where they’re joined, down his legs to his toes, into his fingertips. It builds and builds into an overwhelming crescendo.

 

His orgasm hits him like a freight train and it’s like being at gods’ performances but now he _knows_ that Len is completely focussed on him. There’s no one else.

 

Len chose _him_.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

It’s Saturday morning and Barry has his head resting on Len’s bicep, not entirely comfortable but he doesn’t want to move. He’s looking up at Len’s face, relaxed on the precipice of sleep.

 

“Who were you before?”

 

Len shifts imperceptibly, the only indication for a long time that’s he’s awake and has heard Barry’s question. Barry waits.

 

“No one. It doesn’t matter. It’s all gone now.”

 

“That’s not true.”

 

Len’s studied silence voices his opinion on that loud and clear.

 

“Did you have a family?”

 

It’s not until the words are out of his mouth that Barry realises he’s used the past tense, as if everything Len had been before his ascension was inconsequential. As if human Len and Len as Boreas were completely different entities, a weighty line separating them.

 

Barry thinks of his father. If Barry had become one of the gods, he wants to think that he wouldn’t just up and abandon him. He’d hope that the power that came with divinity wouldn’t make him cut himself off from the life he had lived up until that point.

 

“I mean,” Barry corrects himself, “do you have a family?”

 

Len turns his head and there’s so little space separating them. “A sister. Younger.”

 

“Do you still see her?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“What about your parents?”

 

Len shrugs Barry of his arm and turns away. He closes his eyes and feigns not hearing or maybe being asleep and Barry leaves it be. He places a kiss to Len’s shoulder and then slithers down his body, worshipping every stretch of skin on his way. By the time his face is level with Len’s hips, Len has given up any pretence of sleep and their eyes are locked and heated as Barry leans forward to mouth at Len’s cock. He’s still mostly soft at first, but that doesn’t last long.

 

_This is a thank you_ , Barry thinks to himself as he takes Len deep, _for letting me see a little of the real you_. He’d never say it aloud though.

 

Len comes in his mouth and it’s Barry’s very own profane Eucharist.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s Saturday evening and Len is singing to him, his voice like ambrosia.

 

Barry wants to drink it straight from his lips but at this point he’s too fucked-out to do more than lay there on the bed and listen, drifting occasionally into sleep and dreaming of exactly this.

 

They’ve barely left the bed since they fell into it Friday night. Between bouts of sex Barry has managed to get answers to some of his questions and he’s repaid Len with stories of his own life, things he hasn’t told anyone before. He feels safe in his confessions and Len doesn’t judge.

 

Len, in turn, is cagey about the details of his own life pre-ascension. He’s happy to give Barry all the sordid details of the other gods’ love affairs and mischief, but he won’t even tell Barry where he grew up. Not for lack of trying on Barry’s part either. Every topic that gets brought up Barry tries to segue into a question about Len’s own life. Sometimes it’s not all that subtle.

 

“The Diamonds look like they’ve got a good chance of getting into the finals this year,” Barry remarks at one point, propped up against the headboard. The TV is on in the background for something different and it’s playing the sports section of the evening news. Len isn’t paying attention. He’s straddling Barry’s lap and grinding against him.

 

Len hums noncommittedly as he continues to nuzzle kisses behind Barry’s ear, his hands in Barry’s hair and his erection hard against Barry’s stomach.

 

Barry bites his lip to hold back a moan. His voice is shaky as he continues. “Did you play baseball in high school?”

 

Len pulls back, hands slipping down to cup Barry’s ass and he smirks but not unkindly. “Give it up, Barry.”

 

“But—”

 

He tries to protest but he’s drawn forward into a series of chaste kisses, completely at odds to the hand Len has slipped between them to jack their cocks fast and hard.

 

 

***

 

 

The days Barry spends with Len are the best of his life.

 

He’s been alone so long he’s grown comfortable with loneliness and it’s like walking out into the sun after spending his life underground.

 

Time and time again he finds himself wondering why Len continues to entertain him when everyone else he’s ever met in life has taken one look at him and walked the other way.

 

“Don’t you have other things to do?” He asks after the first night, expecting to get turned out onto the street now Len’s had his fun. “Important god things?”

 

“No,” Len answers, drawing shapes on Barry’s bare skin, “nothing more important than you.”

 

Len is 26. Barry doesn’t know where he was born or grew up but, before he became a god, he lived in the Keys. He has a sister. His hands move like a magician’s and he can’t seem to turn his head without throwing his whole body into the action too. Light jumps into his eyes when he smiles and it might just be a god thing, but Barry bets it was pretty amazing before, too.

 

Len makes him feel special. It’s like all of his dreams come true, everything he ever wanted for his first time. Barry’s afraid he might wake up with these moments drifting from his memory like the smoke from Len’s cigarette as he indulges on the balcony, whisked away by the wintry breeze.

 

Len puts his hand against the wall and draws ice patterns that spread out across the ceiling like the branches of trees or the vanes of a feather. It brings the temperature of the room down but Barry just snuggles further into the blankets and feels content. Len looks at him out of the side of his eye and smiles.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s Sunday night and Barry is on the threshold to Len’s apartment, pulling on his jacket for the first time since Friday, and asking, “Can I see you again?”

 

Len avoids the question.“In less than two years I’ll be dead. That’s not a guess, that’s a fact. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Barry.”

 

“I don’t care,” Barry answers, letting himself out the door and into the hallway.

 

Len stands in the door, taciturn. His eyes stay trained on the painfully modern patterning of the hallway’s carpet. Barry reads in the stiffness of his shoulders that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea.

 

Barry’s not ready for this to be over yet though.

 

“Do you have a phone or do you communicate by oracle or something?”

 

Len scoffs, and he looks surprised by his reaction, like he hadn’t meant to rise to anything Barry said, but it raises his eyes above ground level and Barry catches them and doesn’t let go. Eventually, like it pains him, Len concedes that he does have a phone.

 

“Okay, cool. Give it to me.”

 

Barry holds his hand out between them until Len sighs and goes to fetch his mobile from inside his apartment. He hands it over indulgently and Barry tries not to notice all the neglected notifications – calls and texts – before he gets into the contacts and starts typing away.

 

“That’s me,” he says, handing it back. “Text me if you want to meet again.”

 

 

 

***

 

 

He stops by a late-night supermarket on his way home and buys a new shirt, just something cheap that doesn’t look anything like the shirt he left home in on Friday. The cashier hands him his receipt and her fingers, when they brush his, feel like burning.

 

He quickly changes into it in the parking lot, more worried about his dad judging his life choices than strangers seeing him shirtless. He doesn’t entirely know why he goes to this effort. His dad has never judged him, might not even notice he hadn’t changed in three days. In fact, he’d probably be happy Barry had connected with someone. Barry had never had much in the way of friends growing up.

 

His dad is making himself a cup of tea when Barry lets himself into the house. “Hey, dad.”

 

“Hey, slugger.” Henry is wearing his glasses and the woollen jumper Nora gave him for their 10th anniversary just before she died, a little threadbare and worse for wear now. Barry knows wearing it makes him feel close to her and he’s suddenly struck with an inexplicable fondness for his father. “What have you been up to this weekend?”

 

Barry goes to stand beside Henry, shoulder to shoulder as he stirs the milk into his cup, before tapping the spoon twice on the rim and then putting it into the sink with a metallic ting.

 

“Did you want one?” he asks.

 

“No, thanks.” Barry follows his dad as he goes into the living room and takes his customary seat next to the fireplace. Barry sits on the couch across from him. “I went to see another god perform.”

 

“That’s right. I remember you telling me you were going to do that.” Henry folds up his glasses and puts them on the coffee table. This has always been his way of showing Barry he has his full attention. “How was it? Better than Baal?”

 

“Yeah,” Barry says, trying not to sound too besotted. “I met him, afterwards. Boreas.”

 

“You did? How exciting.”

 

Barry ducks his head. “Yeah.”

 

Barry’s just about to open his mouth and tell his dad how amazing it had all been, how he’d finally connected with someone in the way that other people found so easy and that he thought he might be a little in love but his dad speaks first.

 

“I feel so sorry for their families. No parent ever wants to outlive their child.” Henry looks over to the photo of Nora they keep on the mantelpiece. Barry thinks it’s not too fair for a parent to die before their child when the parent’s as young as his mother had been either. “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be told your kid will be dead in two years.”

 

Silence falls between them. Barry can’t say the things he’d wanted to anymore, they seem trite compared to Henry’s reflections. He thinks of Len’s refusal to tell him anything about his parents. Maybe it’s not so easy on the child either.

 

“I hope the stories aren’t true,” Henry eventually says, reaching for his glasses, signalling the end of the discussion. “I hope it turns out to be some big, elaborate hoax.”

 

The things his father said make Barry feel uncomfortable. He knows for a fact that it isn’t a hoax.

 

He quickly bids him good night and heads to his bedroom.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Len texts him the following night.

 

When Barry sees the unknown number flash up on his mobile screen, a wave of excitement spikes through him. The only person who texts him regularly is his dad and he certainly hasn’t been giving his number out to anyone else recently; it has to be Len. Finally. He wants to grab it up immediately. Instead he makes himself wait five minutes. He doesn't want to look too desperate.  
  
Those minutes are agony though. He can't concentrate on anything besides the message so he eventually gives up on getting his holiday homework done and just sits there, staring like a freak as the notification light flashes on his phone.

 

When he’s deemed that enough time has passed, he grabs the phone, swipes into the home screen and to the message.

 

**This is a mistake.**

Barry smiles, ghosting his finger over Len’s words. Len might think it’s a mistake, but it’s still one that he’s willingly made against his better judgement. Barry can live with that.

 

He quickly saves Len’s number and then texts back.

 

**No worse than the cigarettes.**

 

Len’s answer comes almost immediately.

**I hope not.**

Throwing shame to the wind, Barry replies just as quickly. It’s not like he’s tried to hide how into Len he is. He wouldn’t know how to.

 

**When can I see you again?**

Len’s answer doesn’t come as quickly this time. Barry waits whole minutes staring at his phone, every so often running his finger over the screen so it stays on. He wishes they were doing this on a messenger app so he could know whether Len has seen the text or not. Barry imagines him with phone in hand, brows furrowed, desire or something more warring with his better judgement. Typing out an answer and then erasing it, starting from scratch again. Barry doesn’t know exactly why Len’s so against this. Two years is a long time. A lot could happen between then and now. Two years could even be long enough to find out how to break this 90 year cycle.

 

Barry had always imagined himself being the one to crack the secrets behind the Recurrence. Changing the system itself was beyond his wildest dreams but now that he’s got the idea in his head, it’s all he can think about. He obviously doesn’t want Len to die; he thinks he might be in love with him. So maybe just this once someone can unravel the mystery and the gods can live. Maybe that someone can be him.

 

The chime of an incoming text shakes Barry from his musings.

 

**Tomorrow evening? 7 at mine?**

 

Barry can barely contain his excitement. He punches the air and lets out a whoop that he instantly regrets, shrinking into himself and hoping he hasn’t woken his dad.

 

**I’ll be there.**

 

Barry’s going to get Len to tell him everything he knows about the Recurrence. Together they’ll find a way to escape fate.

 

Len won’t die, not while Barry has anything to do with it.

 

 

***

 

 

Barry grabs his wallet off the table on his way out and stuffs it in his pocket. He takes one last look at himself in the hallway mirror, trying futilely to get his hair to sit right for the thousandth time. As always, it continues to spring back in whichever direction it wants.

 

“Dad, I’m heading out,” he yells back into the house.

 

Henry pops his head out of the living room. “Have a good time.”

 

Barry feels his face heat up as – after a moment – he tacks on: “I might not be back tonight.”

 

Henry shakes his head with a chuckle. “You’re an adult, Barry. You don’t have to explain your comings and goings to me.”

 

“Still…” For the longest time, Henry and Barry only had each other. In a way it feels like he’s abandoning his dad to go see Len. He knows that isn’t the way it actually is, of course; leaving the nest is just a part of growing up. But he can’t shake the image of Henry, home alone, missing his son and mourning his wife. If things keep going the way they seem to be going, maybe Barry could start bringing Len over for dinner or something. Henry would probably like the company. Barry really hopes they get along.

 

Henry tilts his head and takes in Barry’s outfit. “You look good,” he says.

 

Barry flushes but he’s exorbitantly grateful for his father’s words.

 

“Thanks, Dad.”

 

In the evening light and without his presence as a distraction, Barry can admire Len’s building. _New Genesis_ is writ large across the entrance. It juts up into the sky, regal and imposing, a slash of darkness against the fiery sunset. Barry can’t tell how many floors there are but he’s fairly sure Len’s place is near the top.

 

At the door he punches Len’s apartment number into the intercom and waits as it dials.

 

A couple of people swipe their cards and enter before Len’s voice comes through on the tinny speaker and Barry wonders if they know they share a building with divinity.

 

“Barry?”

 

Barry leans into the intercom as someone passes behind him, feeling exposed for some reason. “Yeah, it’s me.”

 

“Come on up.”

 

Barry has dressed up as much as he can. Not having much of a social life, he doesn’t have a large wardrobe but he’s put himself together in what clothes he does have that make him look good. He spent a full hour choosing them and they hug a little tighter than he’s usually comfortable with but he wants Len to want him.

 

But as he rides the lift up, he looks at himself in the mirrored back wall and regrets every decision he made. He looks like he tried too hard and he imagines Len taking one look at him, seeing how very desperate he is, and being repulsed. It’s almost enough to make him stop the lift and send it straight back down.

 

But then the doors ping open and Barry exits into the corridor. It snakes and bends, a labyrinth, but Barry’s feet are drawn forward by something not of his own control, sure in their path.

 

When Len answers the door, he cups Barry’s face there on the threshold and kisses him so sweetly Barry almost melts. The meeting of their lips, cool against warm, is invigorating; it breathes life into Barry that he hadn’t realised Len’s absence had sapped from him. Barry can’t understand how Len can be so tender but think this is a mistake.

 

He can’t keep the grin off his face when Len steps back and he knows he must sound goofy when he teases, “Missed me?”

 

Len is much more practised at this. He turns and retreats into the apartment, making Barry chase him. The smooth drawl of his voice as he admits, “Maybe,” strangles something inside Barry.

 

There’s no need for pretence in front of Len so when Barry catches him halfway into the living room, he stops him with a hand around his wrist, pulls him back to steal a kiss and admits freely, “I missed you.”

 

Len stands there still for a beat as Barry goes on ahead and flops down on the couch, pressing his face against the fabric to hide his ridiculous smile. It doesn’t help him calm down at all though: the couch smells entirely of Len. There’s a hint of his deodorant or maybe his aftershave, but beneath that is something more intrinsically Len and harder to put into words. Wintry is one way to describe it, thinks Barry, and he wonders if he’s always smelt that way or if it’s linked to his godhood.

 

When Barry uncovers his face, Len is still standing and looking at him with confusion and Barry thinks that it’s because of his easy admission of missing the man. He can only assume that Len’s not used to being missed. Even though he’s only known him a short time, Barry thinks Len underestimates his own value. Perhaps that’s why he tried to push Barry away despite the undeniable spark between them.

 

“It’s only been two days.”

 

“I know,” Barry groans. “It’s embarrassing.” It is, but it also isn’t. Everything about this feels too right to be ashamed of.

 

Len takes a seat beside him and Barry can feel the cold of his thigh where it brushes up against his own. It makes him think of how it felt, skin to skin, Len above him and all around him. _Inside_ him. His heart rabbits, his palms sweat. He can’t look Len in the eye because he’ll _know_. He’ll know exactly what’s going through Barry’s mind and he wishes he wasn’t so obvious. The last thing he wants is to look desperate.

 

At the same time, he thinks, Len was his _first_. His first everything. That has to mean something.

 

Doesn’t it?

 

Barry’s startled from his thoughts by Len’s hand on his head, ruffling his hair.

 

“What’s going on in there?” He asks with fondness in his voice. He’s got one leg folded beneath him, and Barry sees now that his feet are bare. That small detail is somehow unbearably domestic and familiar and it makes Barry ache for this every day.

 

Barry could tell him how he’s probably in love with him; how Len has been in his thoughts every moment since they parted; how, lying in his bed last night, Barry’s fingers had retraced the paths Len’s had forged over his body. Not even to chase the heights of carnal passion they’d reached together, no, just to have touched somewhere Len had and to therefore feel closer to him.

 

Barry’s in pretty deep. He has an inkling that Len might feel the same.

 

But it’s too early for that.

 

So, instead, he brings up the one other thing that has occupied his thoughts.

 

“I have a plan.”

 

Len quirks an amused eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

 

“But I need your help.”

 

“Okay.” Easy as that. _Okay._ Barry could ask for anything and Len would do it. His heart beats faster. “Are we robbing a bank? Staging a prison break? Getting _experimental_?”

 

Len’s fingers – those gorgeous fingers – are playing with the hem of Barry’s shirt and it’s driving him to distraction. He feels a need to grab them, hold them, perhaps take them in his mouth. He _wants_.

 

But now there’s something he wants more in the long run.

 

“I need to know about the Recurrence,” Barry says, “everything you haven’t already told me.”

 

The change in Len’s demeanour is instantaneous. His hands slip away, the cool of his body disappearing from Barry’s side, and it feels like a punishment. Nevertheless, Barry waits in hope. He knows Len finds it difficult to talk about these things but Barry believes if he just gives him time and space, he’ll come around. He waits and receives stony silence in reply. Eventually he’s forced to talk or be crushed under the weight of the unbearable quiet.

 

“There has to be a way to stop the cycle. If I just had all the information, I could—”

 

“Stop,” Len commands him, his voice cold like steel. “I don’t want to hear this.”

 

“But there has to be a way!”

 

Len stands up and walks away. He disappears into his bedroom and Barry is left to sit alone on the couch, wondering if he’s ruined things for the night and should just leave. It would be the easy thing to do. Barry has never been in a relationship before and he’s certainly never been in proper conflict with anyone. It makes him feel sick to his stomach that he’s been the cause of such an intense reaction from Len, that he could have upset someone he cares for so deeply.

 

It would be so easy to run away.

 

Over half an hour later when Len eventually re-emerges, Barry is still sitting in the exact same place he’d been left, paralysed by indecision.

 

Len comes to him, kneels before him and takes Barry’s hands in his. His thumb sweeps comfortingly over Barry’s skin.

 

“Hey,” Len speaks gently, so different to the last words that had come out of his mouth. “Look at me.”

 

Barry lifts his head and meets Len eye to eye. There are apologies there that go unspoken and a whole wealth of other emotions.

 

“I’m going to die.” Barry’s heart breaks. “If you want to be around me then you need to be okay with that.”

 

Barry clings to Len’s hands as if doing so could keep them together forever. “I don’t think I could ever be okay with it,” he admits. Even for as little as they’ve known each other, Barry is more committed to Len than anyone else in his life barring his father.

 

Len’s mouth ticks up at the edges in an approximation of a smile that is too bogged down with the sorrow in his eyes to look anything like happiness. “And that’s why this is a mistake.”

 

“Can we at least talk about this some other day?”

 

“Sure,” Len says and he doesn’t even pretend like he isn’t lying.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

On stage, Boreas is a presence.

 

There’s no other way to explain it. As soon as he steps out under the lights, he’s the focus of everyone’s attention, drawing their eyes like a magnet. Between one breath and the next he becomes something elevated above all human matters, a divine being sent down to earth for god knows what reason.

 

The performance itself is magical and chilling in equal parts. As soon as Boreas appears, the temperature drops instantly. At first it comes as a relief after the oppressive heat of the tightly packed room, so many bodies intimately close, sharing breath and sweat and warmth. The crowd revel in the reprieve for only a short while; then the temperature drops just a little too low to be comfortable. Barry learns quickly to bring a jacket.

 

As Boreas caresses the microphone and crowds into the stand, Barry is thrown back into his memories. He can practically feel Len pressing against him, the chill of his body against Barry’s chest and around his wrists where Len has them pinned above him against the wall. He nuzzles in under Barry’s jaw, his early morning stubble ticklish against Barry’s throat, and then—

 

Boreas sings.

 

His voice starts breathy and low, like it’s hard for him to get out, like the sails of a ship straining to fill under a light breeze, and the crowd presses closer to hear. Watching from the wings, Barry knows logically that regardless of where you are in the venue the sound quality’s going to be about the same thanks to the wonders of speaker technology, but he still feels that same pull to get closer in fear of missing out.

 

It’s something he’s felt at every divine performance, this feeling of immediacy and impermanence. He knows that when two years have passed, he’ll never experience anything like this again in his lifetime. It’s fleeting and formative. He barely blinks, Boreas’ image burning itself into his mind and Barry has to admit that the god on the stage isn’t exactly the same as the man he had in his bed.

 

Boreas’ eyes undulate like the aurora that was named for him as he takes the mike from its stand and steps closer to the edge of the stage, a hundred hands raised in supplication urging him forward. He doesn’t tease them like he’d teased Barry, just croons at them in that voice that sounds like cracking ice and stinging winds.

 

Then he _howls_ like a hurricane and Barry realises his first performance was only a warm up. Between one breathe and the next, everything escalates.

 

Ice shoots up at the edges of the stage, jagged and opalescent, and the north wind rushes through the venue, spurring on intangible stallions shaped out of frost that gallop in the spaces between people. Barry reaches out as they run through backstage and they slip through his fingers, leaving nothing but dew behind.

 

The temperature has dropped again and Boreas, usually a little pale-looking, has a tinge of blue to him now that would be worrying on anyone mortal. Barry spots frost accumulating on his hands and arms, on his brow. It clumps and after a few minutes it looks more like gloves and a crown than anything else.

 

He’s a god and a king and Barry’s everything.

 

Boreas steps away from the mike and looks to the wings and his eyes – still dancing with unnatural light – find Barry’s immediately, like he’d been aware of exactly Barry where was the whole performance. Perhaps he had been.

 

Barry sees his lips move, the sound not projected out into the hall by the speakers with the mike now dead, but Barry knows exactly what he’s saying.

 

  1. 2\. 3. 4.



 

The fierce North Wind that had danced and howled around the venue the entire performance collects itself at the back of the hall and then rushes at Boreas, led by twelve stallions. They crash into the god like a tidal wave and he explodes in a flurry of icy particles.

 

The crowd goes wild. They can’t see where he’s reappeared in the wings, materialising toe-to-toe in front of Barry, his head already resting against Barry’s, sharing space and breathe.

 

As soon as Len steps out of the spotlight, he’s a shadow of himself. Barry leads him away from the clamouring crowds and he’s easy to steer, as if he has no will of his own. Barry sits him down and he wonders what Len did before Barry came along. He’s glad he only had to deal with it alone once. Barry sits beside him and holds his hand, resting his head on Len’s shoulder as he slowly comes back to himself.

 

The performances take a lot out of him, including a part of himself. The human part, Barry suspects. He wonders if it’s the same for the other members of the Recurrence or whether this is just a specific part of Len’s experience.

 

When Len speaks about it – and he rarely does and only in vague terms, as with everything related to the Recurrence – he calls Barry his anchor.

 

 

***

 

 

After those first big concerts, Len mostly sticks to dingy pubs and bars for his performances. They’re the kind of places you’d either walk by on the street, not knowing what was going on behind shuttered windows, or would purposely avoid. Barry asks him why one day and he says it doesn’t matter. Barry presses and that’s when they have their first proper, no holds barred fight.

 

They’ve been in each other’s lives for about a month by that point and Barry wants to know more about Len the man, not the god. That morning he’d decided he wasn’t going to let Len get away with obfuscating any longer. But no matter how much he cajoles and pleads, Len still thinks it’s none of his business. They scream at each other for a while out the front of a dodgy-looking bar in the Keys, Barry angry and scared to the core that not knowing anything makes him disposable, that this is Len’s way of keeping him at arm’s length so that in a day, a week or a month when he walks away, he won’t feel anything.

 

When they’re just re-treading the same arguments for the second time, Len disappears in a flurry of snowflakes and Barry’s left alone. He punches the wall in frustration and the pain immediately brings him back to himself. He looks around the deserted street, illuminated by oases of light from the streetlamps and the absence of any kind of breeze lets him know Len is well and truly gone. He’s relieved there wasn’t anyone around with a camera phone so at least he won’t have to relive this embarrassing moment tomorrow on the evening news. He angrily rings up and orders a taxi. Len was supposed to be his ride home.

 

No apology comes the next day. In fact, he doesn’t hear anything from Len. Barry believes he’s in the right so he refuses to be the one to seek the other out and make amends. It doesn’t mean the next few days aren’t hell, thinking maybe it’s all over and he has to return to his normal life. Len is constantly in his thoughts all day and it makes it hard to focus on uni so in the end he just takes a couple of days off.

 

And yet, despite the lack of communication, Barry finds the time and address of the next performance frosted onto his bathroom mirror the morning of. The words melt when he touches them and he licks the wintry dew from his fingertips. Arousal pools low in his stomach. He jerks off hastily and he can almost imagine that the cool of the porcelain sink against his back is Len.

 

That night Len meets him out front as always, seemingly materialising out of thin air when Barry arrives, and no one questions Barry’s age when he’s escorted in by a god.

 

They make out like teenagers in the back room before the performance and neither one of them apologises to the other. Barry’s not overly bothered by it. He knows he and Len have very different opinions on information sharing. Barry isn’t about to give in and he’s sure Len isn’t either. It will always be a point of contention between them. He can live with that though.

 

 

***

 

 

Barry’s in the front row of every performance and afterwards – when Len is glassy-eyed and euphoric from the crowds, a little lost in himself – Barry’s on his knees in the bathroom, worshipping his god the best way he knows how; or pushed up against the wall in a back alley, Len’s cold hand sneaking below the waistband of his jeans; or, on one memorable occasion, fucking beneath the stars in a rooftop beer garden.

 

It’s a miracle they haven’t been arrested for public indecency yet.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

For a while Barry throws himself back into research without Len’s knowledge.

 

He’s half tempted to reach out to the other gods now that he’s got an in but ultimately abandons the idea in fear that Len would find out about his meddling. For some reason that he can’t justify within himself, he’s fine that they argue about it privately, but bringing someone else into it somehow seems like a betrayal.

 

It’s hard though. Even in the middle of a Recurrence occurring in a period where information is at the tip of anyone’s fingers and where news from one end of the earth reaches the other in seconds, nothing new is being leaked. The gods, like the popstars they are, speak a lot without actually saying anything. It’s like the interviewers couldn’t care less about the workings of the Recurrence, all they want to know about is who the god is having sex with, what they’re wearing, what events they’ll be attending. It makes Barry want to pull his hair out. Len alone doesn’t do interviews which Barry is grateful for. Not least because his answer to _who are you sleeping with?_ is Barry, and Barry doesn’t need that kind of attention.

 

So Barry throws out all those puerile magazines and keeps reading over the same old folklore and essays and coming up with nothing.

 

The story is always the same. Every ninety years twelve gods incarnate as ordinary humans. There’s no rhyme or reason as to who is chosen or which gods appear each time. The god in human form has preternatural abilities which have always been called miracles. They perform, they inspire, and they never live longer than two years.

 

There’s no records of anyone succeeding in disrupting the cycle (nor any mentions of anyone even trying, for that matter), and neither is there much on exactly how these gods die. It’s just taken for granted that they do. They’re here and then, just as suddenly, they’re not, until the whole thing happens again ninety years later.

 

And so, like the cycle of the Recurrence, Barry’s research goes around and around in circles.

 

 

 

***

 

 

They get drinks one night in a grimy bar called Saints and Sinners, just off the industrial area of Keystone. It’s the kind of place people get stabbed in and Len seems right at home.

 

They commandeer a booth in the back, hidden from the barman’s line of sight by the pool tables (though Barry half thinks this place wouldn’t care too much about underage drinking) and then Len disappears, re-emerging a few minutes later with a bourbon for himself and a beer for Barry. Their feet tangle together under the table.

 

Len flashes the waitress a smile that’s all teeth when she drops off a bowl of chips for them and then proceeds to pick at them like a particularly fussy seagull.

 

“Why here?” asks Barry.

 

“It was my usual. Before,” he clarifies, ‘before’ being when he was human, normal, a person Barry isn’t entirely sure he knows. It’s not worth thinking about though. Len is who he is now and Barry will never know any different.

 

The bar has a garish old jukebox that still has vinyl albums inside it and Len drops a couple of dollars in to listen to some classic rock that is only half-familiar to Barry. Len doesn’t do more than tap a single finger against the roughed up wood of their table but there’s the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth and Barry thinks this is as good as it gets as far as Len is concerned.

 

When Barry’s near the end of his bottle and has the excuse of a buzz to blame, he admits, “I wanted it so badly.”

 

Len knows exactly what he’s referring to. “You’re an idiot.”

 

Barry shoots him an unimpressed look. “You can’t tell me a little part of you didn’t hope it’d be you when you first heard about it.”

 

“I didn’t think it was real until…” Len pauses to think. “Sekhmet? I don’t really remember.” He waves it away. It’s unimportant. “Sometime around then. Before that… I don’t know, I guess I thought it was a publicity stunt or something. The miracles were just parlour tricks and pyrotechnics.” Len lapses into silence. He looks at something that Barry can’t see. “When it clicked that it was all real and that teenagers – kids – were becoming gods, I prayed every night that it wouldn’t happen to my sister. Anyone but her.” A self-deprecating smile flashes across his face. “I guess maybe I prayed a little too hard because here we are.”

 

Barry reaches forward until their fingertips are in contact, a throwback to their first touch but Barry doesn’t baulk at the chill of Len’s flesh anymore. Everyone else feels too hot now.

 

“I wish you’d tell me more about how it works. Maybe we could figure out how to end it.”

 

Len’s reaction is instant and expected. “Stop it, Barry.”

 

“No.” This topic always angers him and yet Barry keeps pushing. He doesn’t know how Len can resign himself so easily to his fate, like a lamb to the slaughter. Barry wants him to rail and rave against it in the same way Barry wants to. “I don’t want you to die any more than you do.”

 

Len leans forward, ever closer physically and yet always trying to pull away emotionally. “But maybe I deserve it.”

 

“No one deserves to die!” Barry says, exasperated.

 

“You haven’t met the other gods.”

 

“So, what? They’re scumbags so you think that makes you a scumbag too?” Barry’s getting too loud and there are people looking over to the pair of them but he can’t make himself care.  Len needs to get it into his stubborn head that Barry is here, and willing and eager to help. “Sorry to tell you, but there’s good in you, Len.”

 

Len stands up abruptly and plants his hands on the table. “How would you even know? You don’t know the first thing about me.”

 

“I know _you_.”

 

“You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

 

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve _done_.” Barry says, wishing more than anything he knew even a tenth of Len’s life before his Ascension. “People grow, they change. Okay, maybe you’re not the world’s most upright guy. So what? You should just let yourself be a sacrifice to this cycle? Why are you so willing to fight everything else but not this?”

 

“Because,” Len says with finality, “it’s better to accept it than to fight and lose anyway.”

 

Whatever momentum the argument had, that admission takes the wind out of it. Barry suddenly feels like the scum of the earth. He supposes his position affords him a degree of separation from the situation so when he thinks about trying to stop the Recurrence, it’s a purely theoretical endeavour that won’t impact him if he fails. This is the first time it really hits him that Len’s life hangs in the balance here.

 

In all of recorded history, the gods of the Recurrence have never lived into a third year, and here Barry is with the impudence to ask Len to hope for the impossible instead of using the time he has left to do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said before going gracefully.

 

God, he’s such a prick.

 

“Len, I’m sorry.”

 

Len turns away from him and Barry can’t help but feel like he’s shutting down, overloaded by too much emotion. Barry almost expects him to magic away in a swirl of snowflakes like last time, but he doesn’t.

 

“I need to be alone,” he says quietly, as though it pains him to admit his weakness. “Can you get yourself home?”

 

“Yeah, of course,” Barry is quick to reassure. It’s still early, he’ll have no trouble either calling his dad or catching a taxi. “Don’t worry about me.”

 

Len nods sharply, the action jerky, as though he isn’t in full control of his own body.

 

“Okay,” he says. He looks much younger than he is as he stands there unmoving with his head hung low, only a wounded little boy in a world that’s out to get him.

 

After a few moments Barry starts wondering if he’s the one who’s supposed to leave first but he can’t make himself walk away from Len in the state he’s in.

 

He’s surprised when Len kneels at the side of the booth and cups his face in his hands. The chill against his cheeks calms him instantly. Even before Len leans in to kiss him on the cheek, Barry’s eyes are sliding closed.

 

“I’ll call you. I promise,” Len whispers.

 

There is the smallest nip of frost and when Barry reopens his eyes, he’s alone.

 

 

***

 

 

In the taxi home Barry has time to think and he realises that the main reason he doesn’t know Len isn’t Len’s refusal to tell him anything, but his own preconceived notions of what the god was that he’d had long before their first meeting.

 

Len isn’t infallible, he’s not unfeeling and he’s definitely not the answer to all the problems Barry has in his life. That last one is probably the biggest injustice Barry has committed against Len, seeing him as some kind of grand adventure, a cure-all for the monotony and loneliness of his life up until that point. Len has a life outside of Barry and he’s right: Barry doesn’t know the first thing about it.

 

He has hints though and as he puts the pieces together in his mind, like a puzzle coming together, the full picture emerges. Len has an apartment that isn’t his that he hasn’t bothered decorating. Barry can text him at any time of the day and he replies almost straight away. Len may or may not have parents but he has a younger sister who Barry’s never seen or heard. The only messages on his phone besides Barry’s are from other pantheon members, and Len’s as liable to delete them as read them.

 

Barry can’t believe it took him so long to figure it out.

 

Len is a loner too.

 

Just like Barry.

 

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

Barry invites Len to dinner a few days later and he’s quieter than usual. They’re about halfway through the main course when Barry realises that Len’s afraid Barry is going to broach the topic of the Recurrence again. He feels sick knowing his very presence is causing Len anxiety.

 

It’s easier to say things in the dark when they’re alone and cocooned by blankets. Out in public Barry is hyperaware of being watched. The divine mark, so much like a mask across Len’s eyes, singles him out as something other and powerful and people’s eyes are drawn to him. Barry’s gotten used to it in some ways but when it means his personal life is all too public, as is the case now, he finds it confronting.

 

Barry needs to address the unspoken tension between them but not in front of an audience. Who knows who might be listening in? Nevertheless, it has to be done.

 

Barry reaches across the table and entwines his fingers with Len’s.

 

“I’m sorry about the other day.”

 

“It’s fine,” replies Len with a one-shoulder shrug. The fork in his free hand continues to move food around his plate in an aimless manner.

 

“I won’t bring it up again,” Barry vows.

 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Len says with a wry smile. He sighs, pushes his plate away and finally looks Barry directly in the eye in what might be the first time of the night. “I know you mean well. It’s just… hope is a dangerous thing.”

 

Barry squeezes his hand and offers him a strained smile.

 

“You know what? I’m not all that hungry. Do you want to just go home?”

 

Len nods. “Yeah.”

 

“Okay,” Barry pushes back his chair and stands, “just let me get the bill.”

 

He hurries to the wait station to find a server to process his payment.

 

There’s a moment of panic when Barry returns to the table and Len’s not there, and he has to admit to himself that he lives in constant fear of being abandoned. His heart rabbits in his chest and tears begin to well in his eyes.

 

Then Len enters his vision, coming back from the toilets and Barry isn’t big enough to hold all the love he feels for this man. One day, less than two years from now, Barry will look for him and never find him again.

 

“Hey,” coos Len, rushing to Barry’s side and wiping the tears from his eyes, “what’s wrong?”

 

Barry shakes his head. “It’s nothing. I’m being stupid. I just love you so fucking much.”

 

Len takes Barry’s face in his hands and draws him into a kiss so sweet it almost sets Barry to crying again.

 

“Let’s go home.”

 

Len takes Barry’s hand and walks him through the snow and into his apartment.

 

 

***

 

 

Later, Barry is woken up by a soft thud and for a second his sleep-dulled mind thinks he’s fallen out of the bed. But no, the mattress is soft underneath him, downy pillow below his head, the blankets a comforting weight. Len tenses beside him, though, and it wakes Barry up like having cold water dumped on him.

 

Even before he looks he knows they’re not alone in the room.

 

A figure is huddled at the foot of the bed, just a black shadow in the dark of night. It rises, its movements all liquid grace, as Len flips a light switch and reveals it to be the goddess Sekhmet.

 

Barry’s seen her before, at her second performance in Gotham. She’d been feral, hardly human, her voice calling forth phantom felines who stalked the crowd. It had been simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating.

 

“Hello, Boreas,” she purrs at Len. She seems to be entirely unaware of Barry’s existence and he likes it that way so he keeps his mouth shut.

 

“Fuck off, _Barbara_ ,” Len says, throwing his pillow at her. He draws her name out like an insult.

 

Sekhmet catches it easily. “Ananke wants to see you.”

 

“Tell her to fuck off, too. I’m not a part of your little clique.”

 

“You don’t get to say no, Boreas,” Sekhmet says, her voice low and threatening as she shreds the pillow like it’s tissue paper with too sharp nails.

 

“I just did.”

 

The next thing Barry knows he’s in a tangled heap on the floor, his hip aching sharply from where it hit the wall. By the time he manages to throw the blankets off him and scramble to his knees, Sekhmet is crouched over Len and has left bloody gashes from his shoulder downwards. Her fingers are buried up to the first knuckle in Len’s chest, over his heart, only held back by Len’s white, desperate grip on her wrist. His hands ice up as Barry watches, the hoar frost spreading to Sekhmet’s arm, turning the skin an angry red colour that’s painful to look at.

 

“Get your claws out of me,” Len spits out through gritted teeth, “or you lose the arm.”

 

Sekhmet regards him lazily, as if he hadn’t just threated to freeze her whole arm off, as if the skin around where Len gripped her wasn’t now a marble-white and starting to blister before Barry’s eyes. Despite her quick attack before, she moves drowsily like a cat sated on sunshine as she removes her nails from Len’s chest and licks the blood off them, still straddling him. Barry wants to rush forward and push her off but has enough sense to know he stands no chance against a goddess. She’d strike him down dead as quickly and with as little remorse as he might swat a fly.

 

“You can’t fight this forever,” Sekhmet says, getting to her feet and towering over Len like the Colossus of Rhodes. “In the end, we’re all in this together.”

 

She takes a couple of bouncing steps backwards on the bed and then one final one off it, slipping through the floor in a flash of supernatural light.

 

“Fucking bitch!” Len yells impotently after her and then hisses as the movement of sitting up and yelling pulls at the weeping gashes across his chest.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Barry scrambles onto the bed and to Len’s side. His hands hover uselessly over the damage done, “are you okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Len answers, poking gingerly at his wounds, “just stings like a motherfucker.”

 

Barry dashes to the bathroom to grab a towel, pausing a second to take in the extent of the slashes before pressing it against Len’s chest. The violent gashes make him feel sick deep in his stomach but seeing the bright red seeping hungrily into the white fabric brings on the panic.

 

“Len,” he says and it feels like he doesn’t have enough breath, “I think you need stitches…”

 

Len waves him away, running his hand through Barry’s hair before taking the towel from his hands and applying it himself. “I heal fast.”

 

Barry sits back on his heels and watches quietly as Len continues to press the towel against his heart. A minute later he takes it off and his wounds look like nothing more than scratches. Barry would almost think he’d exaggerated them except for the proof of the blood red towel. “I thought you couldn’t get hurt?”

 

“We’re more durable than humans but we’re not indestructible.” Len cleans himself up with whatever part of the towel he can find that’s not already soiled, then goes and throws it in the sink. “Especially not against other gods.”

 

By the time he’s settled back in the bed, warm beside Barry, every trace of his injury is gone. Barry reaches for him and asks, tentatively, “What did she want?”

 

“Nothing good,” says Len, his expression dark.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

Henry pulls up to the curb outside of New Genesis. He and Barry had spent dinner together at the restaurant that had been Nora’s favourite, a habit they’d picked up the third year after her death. The emotions had still been too raw the first two years and anniversaries were more often spent hiding away with their grief at home than anything else.

 

In every other year to date, father and son had gone home together afterwards and watched a movie or listened to music or read a book, but this year Barry had made a request, one he feels guilty for still.

 

“Go on,” Henry prompts as Barry continues to sit in the passenger seat, staring out at the apartment building’s façade, “out you get.”

 

Suddenly hesitant, Barry says, “I don’t have to…”

 

“Go,” Henry urges. “I’m glad someone’s got your mind off of all that depressing Recurrence business.”

 

Barry feels a particularly strong stab of guilt at that statement but he does want to go and be with Len, and Henry is insisting he should, and so, with a heavy heart, Barry unbuckles his seatbelt. He reaches over and squeezes Henry’s hand where it still rests on the gear stick. “You’re the best, Dad.”

 

Barry opens the door and steps out onto the curb. As he leans back down to shut the door, Henry stops him with a raised finger. “I want to meet him in person at some point.”

 

“You will,” Barry says, indecision quickly bleeding into eagerness now that the decision’s made, “I promise.”

 

As the lift ascends, Barry vibrates on the spot with nervous excitement. He can do nothing now but wait for the doors to ping open on Len’s floor and it feels akin to being suspended in limbo. He could be here forever, on the precipice between guilt and ecstasy, a very special kind of torture.

 

But the lift does eventually open and Barry spills out into the bland hallway and walks to Len’s door with hounded steps.

 

The air is pulled from Barry’s lungs like an aircraft venting in space when Len opens the door and instead he’s so full of love and adoration that it makes him feel dizzy.

 

“Hello, birthday boy,” says Len, moving closer to cup the back of Barry’s head and draw him in for a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “How was your dinner?”

 

Barry trails Len into the apartment on jelly legs, pulled along in the wake of Len’s orbit.

 

“Good,” Barry answers too late. “I feel bad leaving Dad by himself, though.” Len leaves Barry standing in the middle of the room as he disappears into the kitchen. There’s the sound of the fridge door opening and closing and then he returns and hands Barry a cupcake with a match stuck in it. “What’s this?”

 

“The finest birthday cake money can buy…” Len pauses for effect, a self-effacing smile on his face, “two minutes before closing at the local supermarket.”

 

Barry takes in the cupcake with all its mass-produced perfection. “I love it.”

 

Len goes and takes his customary seat on the couch as Barry starts peeling the wrapper from the outside of the cupcake, a little at a time as he takes bites out of it, spilling crumbs onto the kitchen benchtop despite his best efforts. Len watches on, a fond look on his face.

 

“I would have done something a bit nicer if you’d told me sooner.”

 

“I didn’t want a fuss,” Barry says after the last bite, licking frosting off his fingers.

 

“Maybe I want to make a fuss of you.”

 

Barry’s insides warm and he reaches out for Len as he approaches. Len twines their fingers together and pulls Barry closer. It’s Barry who climbs up onto the couch, straddling Len’s legs, and wraps his arms around Len’s neck as he pulls the god in for a kiss.

 

“I love you,” Barry breathes between Len’s lips, hoping to hear the words echo back to him from his lover’s core. Already he’s growing hard in his pants; Len’s cool skin produces an almost Pavlovian response in him. They drops items of clothing like breadcrumbs on their way to the bedroom.

 

Barry pushes Len back to sit against the headboard and makes quick work of stretching himself open as Len watches on hungrily. His intense gaze is like a blazing touch raking all over Barry’s body, so unlike the chill touches that meet him when he climbs up onto the bed and into Len’s lap.

 

Len is hard and glorious and Barry wishes he could carve him out of marble, just like this, to have to worship forever. His thoughts stray to the future, to a time after Len; it could be a token, a memento. But he shies away from that.

 

Instead he reaches behind him and takes Len’s length in hand, runs his fingers over the soft hardness of him. Len feels so right in his grip; it was like they were made for each other.

 

Barry sinks down onto him, eyes closed and his mouth open in a breathless moan. The familiar stretch, the cold inside his body like ice chips on your tongue when you’re dehydrated, Len’s hands steady of his hips, guiding him down: Barry lets himself be overwhelmed by it all.

 

When he opens his eyes again, their bodies flush together, Len is looking up at him in wonder. “You feel so good. I wish I could stay inside you forever.”

 

Barry gets his feet under him, takes a handhold either side of Len’s head to steady himself and then begins to fuck down onto Len’s cock, taking his pleasure while Len runs reverent hands all over his body.

 

“I saw you in that crowd the first night and I wanted you,” Len says, the words tripping out of his mouth. They come tumbling out like water bubbling downhill in a brook, never seeming to end until they do. “I wanted you and I was too selfish to stay away. I’m sorry.”

 

Barry kisses Len, a thank you for his openness. He knows it’s hard for his lover to say what he feels. He rewards honesty with honesty. “I wanted you too. As soon as I saw you, there was no one else. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, that will ever happen to me.”

 

“Don’t say that. You don’t know that. You’ll live so long after I’m gone. There’s so much waiting for you.”

 

“You were my first,” Barry admits, breathless.

 

“First what?”

 

“First everything.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Barry,” says Len, grabbing at him with desperate hands, pulling him in, cupping his face, kissing him all over, gently, gently. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

 

 

***

 

 

Henry and Barry are eating together in silence one night when Henry clears his throat.

 

“Do you remember Sharon, my receptionist?”

 

Barry thinks hard. He hasn’t stopped by his dad’s office since his early teenage years when he’d gone there after school and done his homework in the waiting room until Henry had finished with his last patient. The receptionists had been kind but too busy with their own work to entertain a 14 year old for more than a few minutes. That was fine. He’d been well practised in being alone by then.

 

“She was the one with the blonde hair, right? And…” Barry wracked his memory, “two daughters in university?”

 

“That’s the one.”

 

“She’s still working for you?”

 

Henry hummed in affirmation.

 

“What about her?” Barry prods eventually when Henry doesn’t follow through on his strange non sequitur.

 

“She was showing me one of those celebrity gossips sites. One of her daughters sent her the link.”

 

The skin at Barry’s neck begins to creep but for all he knows this isn’t going where he thinks it is. He keeps his eyes focussed on his food and asks as casually as he can, “Yeah?”

 

There’s a beat of silence and in it Barry hears dread, a portent of things that would be better off left unsaid; but they are said, and, once said, are impossible to take back.

 

“She recognised you from the pictures in my office.”

 

Len doesn’t do interviews. He doesn’t do big stadium concerts. He doesn’t go out and wreck property and lives. He’s not like the others.

 

But there are still always photographers and the ever present people with camera phones. Barry doesn’t know what kind of photos Henry saw but he really hopes they weren’t the ones from the first couple of weeks when Barry and Len were all over each other constantly, everything so new and exciting. Hopefully he only saw a candid shot of them out at a café or something.

 

Either way, it doesn’t make the guilt he feels at his deception any greater or less. He let Henry assume he was distancing himself from his obsession of 6 years in favour of a real human connection when he’d been doing the exact opposite. Barry had meant to tell him. He was going to tell him. It just never felt like the right time. His dad seemed so happy that Barry was happy. He hadn’t wanted to wreck that.

 

“I’m sorry,” Barry says and he means it.

 

“I’m not mad. I just wish you’d told me earlier.” Henry takes off his glasses and places them on the table. He rubs at his eyes and it’s like a different man – an older and more worn man – emerges from behind his hands. “You’re in for a lot of heartache, you know that, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He reaches across the table and Barry rushes to take his hand, squeezing it for all he’s worth.

 

“And you know I’m here if you ever need to talk about it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay. Good.”

 

A last squeeze and Henry’s hand goes back to moving fork from plate to mouth. Barry looks down at his dinner but he no longer has the will to eat it. He feels empty down in his gut but not in a hungry way. It still aches though. Breath drops heavy into his chest with every expansion of his ribs and overwhelming sorrow scratches at his throat.

 

Barry sets his utensils down, straightens them so they’re parallel to each other and at right angles to the table’s edge. “Do you mind if I go up to my room?”

 

Thankfully, Henry answers, “No.” He grips Barry’s arm as he passes on his way to put his plate in the sink. “I’m here if you need me though.”

 

“I know.”

 

 

***

 

 

Barry and Len venture out to a café to get lunch. Being in public is always hit and miss. Len never takes his sunglasses off when they’re outside but he still gets recognised. Barry thinks there’s just something about him that screams otherworldly. Barry looks at him sometimes and marvels that he’s this close to divinity.

 

So Barry’s not entirely surprised when he spots a girl look in their direction and then do a double take. He’s experienced that often enough. She’s with a group of other teenagers and Barry groans internally as he realises she’s going to tell them all there’s a god sitting over there and then in a minute they’ll be mobbed by teenyboppers.

 

He taps the back of Len’s hand with his finger and once he’s got his attention, he subtly nods in the direction of the fans. Len follows his gaze and stills.

 

“Lisa,” and her name is like a breath of wind from his mouth.

 

The girl’s eyes light up and she’s running towards them the next moment. “Lenny! It is you!”

 

Len only makes it halfway out of his chair before Lisa has him wrapped in a hug and, as he manages to stand fully, he swings her around as she shrieks happily.

 

“Where have you been?” She demands once she’s been set down on solid ground, punching Len solidly in the arm.

 

He rubs where he was hit, grimacing and answers, “Around.”

 

Lisa glowers but that doesn’t stop her taking Len’s seat at the table, leaving him with no option but to stand. “You’re such an asshole.”

 

“How’s the home?” Len asks and Barry tries his best not to eavesdrop on what is obviously a personal conversation but it’s a little hard when Len and Lisa are practically talking over his head. He feels guilty being a passive participant, especially with how tight-lipped Len is about the details of his life pre-Ascension.

 

Instead, Barry tries to focus on the group of girls Lisa had broken off from to see Len. They whisper excitedly, hiding giggles behind hands and it’s obvious they know who Len is. Even the most reclusive of the pantheon is a superstar. He almost misses when Lisa asks Len, “So, who’s this?”

 

Len nudges Barry with his elbow to get him to answer but he’s really not sure what the correct answer is. “Me? I’m nobody.”

 

Lisa steals a chip from Len’s plate and pops it in her mouth. “Sure thing, Odysseus,” she says with an eye roll. She has all the attitude of the teenager she looks to be.

 

Len mirrors it and it’s easy to see then that they’re siblings. “He’s Barry. A friend.”

 

“A friend. Right.” The way she looks at him, Barry knows she knows they’re fucking. She focuses her attention back on Len. “You need to come see me more often.” After a beat, she adds, “Before it’s not an option anymore.”

 

Len grimaces. “I know. I’ll try.”

 

“Don’t _try_ , just do it.” She points a finger at Barry. “And I’m counting on you to make sure he does, nobody.” She steals another chip and chews on it ruminatively. Then she gets up with a bounce and, despite being a couple of inches shorter than Len, gets him in a headlock and rubs her knuckles across the scruff of his hair, laughing joyously the whole time. He lets her do it for a while and then swats her away affectionately. She takes a couple of steps backwards, breathless and beaming. “Anyway,” she says, “I’ve gotta go before my friends figure out I’m related to such a sad sack.”

 

Len’s sunglasses have become dislodged during Lisa’s attack and he takes them off completely. There’s a shine to his eyes, an extra wetness that’s not so obvious. Barry sees it.

 

“See you, train wreck.”

 

Lisa juts her chin out, her smile wide and her eyes sad. “Love you, jerk.”

 

She leaves and Len watches her long after she’s disappeared into the midday crowd and they can’t see her anymore.

 

“I don’t want to die,” he says almost conversationally, but Barry knows this is a hard thing for him to admit. Hope is, after all, a dangerous thing. “I want to see her grow up.”

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

 

Lucifer dies at the start of August, not even a year after he ascended.

 

By this point, Barry only has eyes for one god. He’s given up trawling online forums for any titbits about these divine celebrities. He still takes notice when one ascends but he’s not as fanatical about seeing them live. In fact, he hasn’t been to a performance since Len ascended. The whole pantheon is almost complete; only two are missing by the end of July – ten months after the beginning of the Recurrence.

 

Barry brings Len home to meet his dad in June. It’s not nearly as mortifying as he thought it would be. There’s a constant tension throughout the night that Barry knows is due to Henry’s worries about the future. He doesn’t want Barry to get hurt – but neither does Len, and they find some common ground there without ever actually talking about it.

 

Afterwards, when it’s time to bring things to an end for the night, Henry rests against the door jamb as Barry follows Len out onto the veranda. Len lets Barry hold his hand, even though Barry can sense it’s making him uneasy.

 

“Thank you for having me over,” say Len demurely.

 

“I’d give you the shotgun talk, but I don’t think it would hold much weight.”

 

The laugh swells up out of Len suddenly and Barry can tell by the look on his face that’s he’s been caught by surprise. Mentioning the unmentionable so nonchalantly breaks the tension of the night like throwing a plate to the ground and then everything gets a bit easier.

 

“No,” Len admits, a smile still on his face, “I suppose it wouldn’t.”

 

“Good night, Len. I hope to see you around a little more.”

 

“I’d like that.”

 

Henry goes back inside and Barry clings to Len’s hand like a lifeline. He’s so full of gratitude to the god for doing this for him. His dad’s approval means everything to him.

 

“Thank you,” Barry says.

 

Len leans in and kisses him chastely and when Barry opens his eyes again, he’s gone.

 

 

***

 

 

It goes on like that for the next month and a bit.

 

Barry is at Len’s apartment almost as often as he’s at home. Some nights they spend tea with Henry even if they’re going to be staying at Len’s because – even though he says he’s fine – Barry hates abandoning his dad as much as he does.

 

It just so happens he’s at home when the news breaks.

 

He’s watching the evening news after tea, unsuspecting while his dad makes himself a coffee in the kitchen, when there’s a commotion in the news room. The anchor breaks off from their report about a local shelter, apologising, but saying there’s breaking news. The television cuts to a woman standing outside a generic inner city street, blue and red flashing lights behind her.

 

“Thanks, Jen,” she begins and Barry already feels sick. He knows that street. He knows that if the camera swung around ninety degrees, it would show an understated sign on the building’s façade saying Lux. He knows what’s coming. “I’m here in downtown LA, at the scene of a bizarre murder.”

 

Barry blanks out after that. The camera does indeed follow the reporter as she describes the circumstances surrounding the murder with expressive hands and settles on the nightclub’s sign. Barry had been in that very spot less than a year ago, nervously waiting in line to see a god. Well, he thinks, he’ll never get to see him again.

 

They cut back to the studio. The newscaster warns that the footage that’s about to be played contains graphic material and viewer discretion is advised.

 

Shaky phone footage follows. It begins in the middle. Lucifer, always cocky and confident Lucifer, takes cautious steps backwards, hands raised placatingly. His mouth moves, the corner of his lips curled up in a devilish smirk, but there’s too much ambient noise to hear them. A ball of light engulfs his head and when it blinks out again, the god’s headless body falls heavily to the pavement. The video cuts off in a howl of screams.

 

The television cuts off a second later and, when Barry looks up, there is Henry, remote in hand and a stricken look on his face.

 

Barry’s first thought is to find Len. Does he know? Of course he must. How could he not.

 

“Barry…”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Barry…” There’s a hint of reproval in Henry’s tone this time.

 

“We knew from the start this would happen.” Barry doesn’t know if by _we_ he means _you and me_ or _Len and me_ or _all three of us_ or _the entire world_. He doesn’t even really know what he means by it at all. Mostly he’s just numb. “I’m fine.”

  
He tries texting Len first. Nothing too elaborate. Just enough to be an invitation to talk if Len wants it. This has always been a sore spot between them.

 

**Hey, heard about Lucifer. You ok?**  
  
He lays his phone face up on his desk, goes and lies down in his bed and every few seconds looks over even though he knows the phone will make a sound if a message comes through.

 

No response is forthcoming though and Barry eventually gets up, grabs the phone and goes to sleep with it clutched in his hand.

 

 

***

 

 

His phone remains silent throughout the next day and by evening Barry’s skin is crawling and his fingers are itching and he picks up the phone and hits dial.

 

It rings and rings and rings and no one answers.

 

 

***

 

 

After classes the next day Barry heads to New Genesis.

 

He still hasn’t had any contact and he’s angry and he’s scared and he just wants to know that Len is still alive.

 

He hears people talk about Lucifer’s death all day; he sees it all over the web as well. These people don’t know the first thing about the Recurrence or Len or any of the other gods. They speculate with detached curiosity and Barry wants to yell at them for being so flippant; that’s his boyfriend – a thinking and feeling, living and breathing person – they’re talking about. Why is Barry the only one who seems to want to do anything to disrupt this cycle?

 

It’s a kick in the teeth when Len opens the door and he looks perfectly fine and normal, and Barry just explodes. It’s amazing how quickly he swings from being ready to fight the whole world to save Len, to wanting to punch him himself.

 

“What the fuck!” He yells and Len flinches. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

 

“Barry, calm down.”

 

“No, I won’t!” Barry pushes into the apartment when Len doesn’t move, gesturing wildly. “I thought you were dead!”

 

“Well, I’m not.” Len hovers in the entranceway, hiding in the recess, and that’s the first proper inkling Barry has that there’s something more going on with Len’s silence.

 

Fear feeds into anger and Barry gets defensive. “How can you be so casual about this?”

 

“Barry, we need to talk.”

 

“No.” Barry shakes his head then shakes it again. Unless Len is going to resolve to fight fate then Barry doesn’t want to hear it.

 

Len steps out of the entranceway, a hand raised towards him. “Barry…”

 

“No, don’t do this.” Barry backs away and he can hear his voice rising hysterically but there’s nothing he can do to reign it in. His breathing is fast and shallow, and his hands shake. “We can do something. I know we can. We’ll figure this out. There has to be a loophole, something no one’s thought of before.”

 

Len grabs him by the arms and makes him stay still. He leans in so they’re face to face and Barry has no choice but to look him in the eyes.

 

“Barry, listen to me.” He pauses to see if Barry is going to try to talk over him again. When he doesn’t, Len continues. “This has been going on for millennia, Barry. You think you’re the first to try and break the cycle? You’re probably not even the hundredth. What makes you so special that you think you of all people can stop this?” The words hurt. Barry has no doubt this is what Len has thought all alone – hell, he’s thought it himself – but he’s never said it so bluntly before. “‘Cause let me tell you, you’re not special. You’re a 20-year old boy who thinks he knows more about the world than he does and those are a dime a dozen.”

 

“I know why you’re saying this.”

 

Barry pulls out of Len’s hold and goes to look out of the windows at the city spread out below. So many times before when he’d done the exact same thing, Len would slip in behind him only a second later, his cool arms wrapping around Barry’s midsection and his lips placing a kiss to Barry’s neck. He knows that’s not coming now but he still can’t help hoping for it.

 

“I don’t want this anymore,” says Len, voice flat. “I’m not taking you down with me.”  
  
"No.” Barry whirls around, pointing a finger at Len warningly. “Just shut up. You don't get to tell me what's best for me."

 

“I was selfish,” Len continues as if Barry hadn’t spoken, his voice that same flat monotone. “I should have walked away when you told me you were 19 instead of ruining your life. But I wanted you so badly.”

 

“I wanted you too,” Barry coos, made soft by Len’s admission. He goes to Len, takes his hands and chafes them between his own, trying to coax some warmth into that cold flesh. “I still do. I love you so much.”

 

Len isn’t looking at him, head turned aside. “You don’t. You think you do, but you don’t.” He extricates his hands from Barry’s and backs up. He wrings them as if he’s trying to rub away Barry’s touch. “I’ll die and you’ll be sad for a while but you’re still so young. I might be your first love but you’ll go on and this will just be a story you tell to all the ones who come after. You’ll tell them how you once loved a god until he died and it’ll be tragic and beautiful and the further I am in your past, the more perfect I’ll be. You’ll forget that we used to fight like cats and dogs, or that I’m an arsehole, or that I wouldn’t answer your calls even when I knew you thought I was dead.”

 

Barry wants to deny it, but Len will be dead within 14 months and who knows what will happen then. He certainly doesn’t. He knows he’ll never forget his time with the god, but is Len right? Will there by someone else? Will all this become a romantic memory? It hurts to think that might be true and yet a little voice in his head whispers, what else could he do?

 

“But you…” Len finally looks at him, “you’ll be my first and my last love.”

 

He walks back to the entranceway and opens the front door, stepping to the side to allow Barry room to pass through.

 

“And now I’m letting you go.”

 

Sorrow wells up inside Barry. “Len…”

 

“There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”

 

With nothing else to do, Barry walks towards the end of his great romance. Standing in the doorway between one part of his life and the next, he feels empty and lost. The future stretches out in front of him and it is unbelievably lonely and aimless.

 

“Don’t come to the concerts,” Len says as he presses one last kiss to Barry’s lips. “Don’t call me. Don’t text me. This is over. Go on with your life.”

 

A gentle push and the door is shut behind him.

 

 

***

 

 

A week later Hephaestus ascends in Central City. Barry follows his movements on twitter and Instagram but can’t bring himself to go to a concert – not least because the new god and Len seem to have become joined at the hip, an arm around each other or a hand on a knee in every photo.

 

Hephaestus is everything Barry isn’t: big, burly, manly. He explodes onto the stage in an eruption of flames and he throws around miracles like they’re candy off a Christmas float. He’s older too – maybe even older than Len – and social media latches onto that and has a field day.

 

On one side of the fence there’s people positing all kinds of theories why the pantheon has suddenly aged up for this recurrence. Some say it’s a punishment for the direction the world’s taken in the last 90 years. Some say it’s a reward for the exact same reason.

 

If the gods know why, they’re not telling.

 

The other side of the internet just like being able to call him “daddy”.

 

Barry won’t deny that it hurts a little bit, that Len could move on so easily.

 

 

***

 

 

Henry is away, on call at the hospital, and Barry is drunk.

 

Sekhmet died the night before; she was the third god to go. The death before that was only a week ago. When Lucifer died, Barry could almost convince himself that it was a one off. He hung onto the hope that the old stories had all been sensationalised; he spun theories about gods faking their deaths and going off to live private lives – a not impossible thing to do in the 1920s and earlier, especially for a god with powers.

 

The second death as well could have been random. But by this point even Barry admitted he was grasping at straws when he tried to tell himself that two didn’t have to be a pattern. But the third… the third really made it hit home.

 

So Barry had held it together throughout the day, said goodbye to his dad as he went off to work at 10 and then pulled a bottle of whiskey out of Henry’s stash and started drinking it straight from the bottle.

 

He starts out maudlin, feeling sorry for himself and mourning what could have been and what will be. He hasn’t spoken to Len in a month and a half but almost every minute of every day is spent being reminded of Barry’s time with him. This first part of the night involves an amount of crying that Barry is not proud of.

 

Anger comes next but it’s directionless and pointless. He paces the floor like a caged animal, too full of feelings he doesn’t want. He hits himself on the leg, over and over and is surprised when the pain creeps in after what he’s done. His knuckles ache as he stretches his fingers out gingerly and there’s a dull pounding in his thigh where the pain is concentrated. The anger is gone but he drinks his way quickly through this mood anyway.

 

Then there’s a need to do something, anything. He feels full of potential energy and before he knows it he has his mobile against his ear, the dial tone stretching his courage thin with every repetition. The ringing goes on for ten seconds, a minute, an hour; it’s hard to keep track and Barry’s mind is beginning to drift when finally and suddenly the phone clicks and there’s the sound of someone not speaking on the other end.

 

“Please don’t hang up,” Barry begs. Len doesn’t reply but he doesn’t end the call either.

 

Barry cradles the phone closer to his face, knowing this is as close as he’s ever going to get to Len again. It will probably be the last time they talk, too, and Barry needs that closure. “I know you said not to ring,” he begins. “I know you did, but I need to say this.”

 

He slumps down to the floor in front of the couch and lets his head drop back against the cushions, everything around him shifting as he pulls together the words in his head into some semblance of coherence. Len waits patiently on the other end of the line but he continues to not say anything. If Barry strains his ears, he imagines he can almost hearing the soft in and out of Len’s breath.

 

“I know you think the rest of them are terrible people who deserve to die. And maybe it’s true. I always thought you were so much better than all of them. You don’t deserve this. You’re a good person.” Barry takes a shuddering breath. “But if it comes down to a choice between doing something bad and dying, I want you to lie and steal and hurt people and whatever else it takes.

 

“Because anything you do that keeps you alive is the right thing to do.”

 

Barry swipes at his eyes, at the tears that have been constant since he began speaking. He feels lighter, the weight of everything he wanted to say suddenly lifted from his shoulders. If this has to be the end of their story, at least there’s some closure to be gleaned from this last outpouring of words.

 

“That’s all I wanted to say. I’m sorry, I won’t call again.”

 

Barry hangs up. He picks himself up from the ground and heads to the bathroom. He washes the salt from his cheeks and changes into pyjamas. The sheets are cold when he slips between them but they warm quickly.

 

Barry wants the cold back.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

Len comes off the stage sweaty and euphoric. There’s no high quite like performing. He should know, he’d tried all kinds in his younger days.

 

He’s supposed to be meeting Mick in the bar after he cleans up a bit, wipes the sweat off. He’s sure his friend is seducing women with trivial miracles right this moment and it’ll be a minor miracle in itself if he sees him more than ten minutes before Mick and his new friend go looking for somewhere a little more private. Len hasn’t had it in him since he broke things off with Barry.

 

He makes it to the bar’s staff room cum dressing room and collapses into a chair, throwing his head back and just breathing for a while. He feels overwhelmed sometimes when he performs now. He’s lost his anchor. It takes a little longer afterwards to remember himself, that he’s not only what he gives to _them_.

 

Len sticks a cigarette between his lips and pats down his pockets, looking for a lighter. He finds one eventually, pulls it out and tries lighting it. And then tries again.

 

The wheel turns under his finger and the flint makes an obliging sound but nothing happens. The damn thing is as unresponsive as the dead. He throws it to the ground with a snarl.

 

There’s a flash of lightning and a gust of wind and it must say something about his life now that he barely reacts to either. Probably Baal here to tell him off again. Barring Mick, Len has very little time for the other gods. They’re all teenagers, early twenties at a stretch, and he can’t stand their naivety and hedonism.

 

A hand is stuck in front of his face, the fingers snap together and a small flame ignites above the thumb. Len follows the arm up to the god’s face. He looks at the lightning bolt that covers his eye now and feels a sense of sadness.

 

“Oh, Barry,” Len leans forward and accepts the offered flame, “what will become of us?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then all the Recurrence stuff ends however Gillen and McKelvie end it, with the caveat that Len and Barry don't die.
> 
> (In summary, go read wicdiv.)


End file.
